Wandering Thoughts

By its nature, anarchist theory is a vagabond theory, light of step,
always on the move. The reason is simple. Reality is not a static
thing, but a play of phenomena in which every individual is actively
immersed. Entrenchment of positions makes no real sense, but traps the
anarchist in the bogs of ideology and militancy. For this reason,
anarchist theoretical endeavors go their farthest when they are taken
lightly and playfully, as explorations, experiments and adventures, not
tasks or duties. What appears here is done in that spirit. Some of it I
wrote years ago, and no longer necessarily agree with, but I think it
has a certain challenge, a certain bite to it.

Every text on this site is anti-copyright. Use any that you like or find useful freely.

NIETZSCHE - ANTICHRIST? by S. E. Parker

(All quotations from Nietzsche, unless otherwise stated, are from the
edition of The Antichrist published by Haldeman-Julius in 1930)

"There have been many great attacks upon Christianity, strong and
effective in their different ways, and one hesitates to distiguish any one of
them by the superlative 'greatest', but if I were to use this superlative -
especially with respect to sheer blasting force of inspired denunciation - I
should apply it to The Antichrist of Friedrich Nietzsche....One is not
only impressed intellectually, but one is thrilled and moved to the depths by
the splendid, sweeping fervour of his attack."

It is with these words that the renowned American freethinker and publisher,
E. Haldeman-Julius, begins the introduction to his 1930 edition of The
Antichrist. That Nietzsche is anti-Christian - that is, anti÷the Christian
Church - is apparent to anyone who has read him. The question I want to ask,
however, is he really anti-Christ as he claimed to be? Before giving my answer
it may be useful to briefly outline the way in which Nietzsche viewed
Christianity.

Nietzsche does not primarily concern himself with the usual questions
regarding the dating of the Christian gospels, their consistency or
inconsistency, or whether Christ did or did not exist. In other words, the
validity of the documentary evidence for Christianity. Nor does he concern
himself with the arguments for or against the existence of God, although he
calls himself an atheist. He adopts what he describes as a
"psychological" approach which revolves around the question: Does
Christianity enhance or depreciate life? He writes:

"What is good? - everything that increases the feeling of power, the
will to power, and power itself, in men. What is evil? - everything based in
weakness. What is joy? - the emotion of power increasing, of a resistance
overcome. Not contentedness, but more power! Not peace at any price, but war!
Not 'goodness', but more ability!....The weak and the misbegotten shall sink to
the ground: that is our humanitarian slogan; and they should be helped to sink.
What is the most harmful vice? - pity, shown to the misbegotten and the feeble
-Christianity."

Nietzsche argues that the attacks made upon Christianity up to his time have
not only been timid but false. Christianity is a crime against life and the
problem of its "truth" is of no value unless it leads to a
consideration of the validity of its morality.

Christianity attempts to reverse natural selection. The Christian is a sick
and degenerate individual who tries to thwart the natural course of evolution
and wants to make the unnatural into law. He seeks to preserve the
physiologically botched, those who are weak, and to strengthen their instinct
to preserve each other. Those who do not regard this attitude as immoral belong
to the same sickly crowd.

"Genuine love of mankind," he writes, "exacts
sacrifice for the good of the species: it is hard, full of self-control because
it needs sacrifice." He adds:

"Neither as an ethical code nor as a religion has Christianity any
point of contact with...........things as they actually are. It is concerned
with purely fantastic causes...and purely fantastic effects. It communes with
purely fantastic creatures...it professes a fantastic science, a fantastic
psychology....this world of pure fantasy is to be differentiated, to its
disadvantage, from the world of dreams, for the dream-world at least reflects
actuality, whereas the other falsifies, slanders and denies actuality."

All religion is born of fear, but the Christian religion is essentially a
product of servile mentalities. The slaves were in fear of their masters and
wanted revenge for their inferiority. Christianity sprang from their resentment
and had as its aim the undermining of the confidence of the ruling castes by
means of guilt-inducing ideas of sin and pity. It was a levelling doctrine like
its offspring socialism. The result of this triumphant slave revolt was the
destruction of the intellectual accomplishments of the ancient world. The
scientific method, the art of reading, the sense for fact - all were in vain.
They were "buried in a night. Not trampled to death by German and other
heavy feet! But brought to shame by crafty, stealthy, anemic vampires. Not
conquered - merely sucked dry!"

Nietzsche ends The Antichrist with an indictment of Christianity as
"the one great curse, the one intrinsic depravity, the one black impulse
of resentment, for which no subterfuge is too vile, or too furtive, or too
underhand, or too mean. I say the thing is the one indelible blot on the
achievement of man...."

Despite the fierceness of Nietzsche's indictment, however, his case against
Christianity is incomplete. As Benjamin de Casseres has pointed out: "The
Antichrist....is an evasion. It was a tremendous onslaught -the greatest
ever made - on Christianity. But Christianity and Christ are identical." (I
Dance With Nietzsche) Nietzsche, in fact, lets Christ off lightly,
focussing his hatred on St. Paul whom he regards as the real intellectual
founder of the Christian creed. Nietzsche accuses Paul of sacrificing "the
Saviour; he nailed him to his own cross." He even blames the disciples for
possessing the "most un-Christly desires for revenge," as if the
numerous threats of hell and damnation attributed to the Christ of the New
Testament could be construed as anything else but a very Christly desire for
revenge! Later he claims that these threats were "put into the mouth of
the Master" by "these trivial people." And in another place he
complains that "The character of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of
life, the meaning of his death, and even the sequel to his death - were all
altered until nothing in the record even remotely approximated to fact."
Just what this alleged "fact" was and how he knew it differed from
"the record" Nietzsche does not say. Indeed it would seem that here
he was contrasting his own private fantasy about Christ with the public fantasy
of the Church.

Nietzsche's famous statement that "there was only one Christian and he
died on the cross" is yet another example of the reverential way he
approached the Christ myth. Even such an ardent Nietzschean as Oscar Levy
admits that "We are confronted here with a weakness in the strong mind of
Nietzsche who, with all his deep insight, was more of an anti-Christian than an
anti-Christ and who had, from his ancestral stock, a remnant of veneration for
the Saviour in his blood." (The Idiocy of Idealism)

But there is more to Nietzsche's reverence for Christ than
the influence of his ancestral stock. If "Christ" is taken as a
symbol for the "redemption of mankind" then Nietzsche would have felt
a strong affinity with him, for he too wished to redeem mankind with his gospel
of the Superman despite his statement in Ecce Homo that "The very
last thing I should promise to accomplish would be to 'improve' mankind. I do
not set up any new idols: may old idols only learn what it costs to have legs
of clay."

Here, for example, is the messianic Nietzsche in full flight:

"Ye lonesome ones of today, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a
people: out of you who have chosen yourselves shall a chosen people arise - and
out of it, the Superman.

"Verily a place of healing shall the earth become! And already is a new
order diffused around it, a salvation-bringing odour - and a new hope!" (Thus
Spake Zarathustra)

This Salvationist strain in Nietzsche's thinking was clearly brought out in The
Philosophy of Nietzsche by Georges Chatterton-Hill:

"Those who represent the Overman as an incarnation of selfishness are
grievously mistaken. It is not his own pleasure that the Overman seeks,
but the justification of eternal Becoming, which is the eternal world
process....the redemption of humanity through suffering, through great and
intense suffering. And out of this intense suffering emerges precisely that
supreme object and work of art which is the Overman, who by his deeds shall
justify all that which is miserable and pitiable in life, and raise it to a
pinnacle of beauty. The Overman modelled in the school of suffering shall in
turn reflect his own glory on the whole of life: and life viewed in the
wondrous light shed on it by the glory of the Overman shall be redeemed and
affirmed and sanctified and justified."

It is a characteristic of all religious and messianic doctrines that they
demand the submission of the individual to some supra-individual entity or
goal. The Christian views the individual as an instrument of his God, the
Marxist views the individual as an instrument of the Dialectical Process, and
Nietzsche, in his turn, views the individual as an instrument for the
realization of the Superman. Having declared "the death of God" he
became obsessed with the problem of finding a new goal for "mankind".
His answer was the creation of the Superman. The godless were to have a new
god.

But I would ask why does my life need to be "justified" and
"redeemed", "purified" by suffering, and the creation of
the Superman? To me, all this is simply the old Christian rubbish given a new
coat of paint. One of the reasons that I am an atheist is because I reject any
belief that demands I serve it. I want my beliefs to serve me. If I am told by
Nietzsche that Christianity is a servile creed, a permanent whine from those
who are not strong enough to face reality, then I agree with him. But if he
goes on to say that I must live my life for the coming of the Superman, I then
classify his words in the same category as I do those of the Christian and his
Christ: mystifying spookery! I live my life for my sake, not for the sake of a
goal set by someone else and transcending me. Nietzsche himself aptly observed
that

"The man of faith, any kind of 'believer', is necessarily subservient
to something outside himself: he cannot posit himself as an end, and he cannot
find ends within himself. The believer does not really belong to himself, he is
only a means, he needs to be used, and he needs someone to use him. His
instinct accords the highest place to a morality of abnegation; and everything
within him - his prudence, his experience, and his vanity - prompt him to
espouse this morality. Any kind of faith is an expression of self-denial, and
of estrangement from self..."

Had Nietzsche taken his own words to heart and applied them to his own faith
he would have freed himself from all religion. Then indeed he would have been
more than anti-Christianity, he would have been anti-Christ.

(Since writing the above I came across the following passage in -another
work by Benjamin de Casseres: The Muse of Lies. Although de Casseres was
an ardent admirer of Nietzsche what he writes supports my theme:

"Nietzsche's doctrine of the 'Eternal Return' was
best illustrated in himself, for he preached the ideal of sacrifice and a
living for a 'Beyond'. He was the last great Christian. The will to create the
superman, the Beyond-Man, orders one even to sacrifice one's friends, says
Nietzsche in one of his aphorisms. Is this not the ecclesiastical furor par
excellence? Can you not see the cowled fanatic in that? Can you not smell
the fagots and the pitch-pile? Cannot we nihilists and mockers see the
psychologic germ of the new Torquemada in that sacrificial admonition? The
Eternal Return! Indeed thou wert a Return, o thou dancing, Dionysian forerunner
of an Inquisition."